1. A Note from Shawn

You can now call me Zia! (Zia means “Aunt” in Italian.) Yes, my sister had a healthy baby girl, who is, undeniably, the cutest baby ever, and I never, ever exaggerate.

In the last newsletter issue, I’d given my best approximation of what mom and babe would look like. However, between email delivery failure and my one high priority for the week, i.e. sisterly support of baby delivery, I didn’t learn until the other day that there was a problem with an image in the last newsletter. Here ’tis with the real one!:

I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about my niece Josie—probably for the next 15 years or so.

Current update: she’s a feeding and pooping machine. Only two weeks old and she has already mastered a simple life. Truly impressive.

Realism meets reality. Really!

I’m not sure if this is bad form or not, but I’m giving you a head start on the first ever Today List Challenge coming up next month (more info below). But hey, it’s all about being in the right place at the right time and you are on it!

Not only are you hearing about the Challenge several weeks in advance, I’m providing the secret sauce recipe to get your habits finely tuned in preparation. Believe me, non-subscribers won’t have a chance against you. (Wow, does that sound competitive? Hmm. Well, I am my mother’s daughter, after all.) What I meant to write was, my intention is for you to cultivate good habits for your own personal well-being. =)

What’s really going on here is that I could use a little practice, too. This morning I realized one of the fundamental differences in approach to your workflow is: Doing based on deadlines vs. Doing based on time and energy available. Guess which one the Natural Professional does? and which has become the norm in our down-sized, do many jobs, work-your-butt off culture?

So let’s get to. Have fun and let it be easy!

XO

Shawn Tuttle

Chief Simplifier, Project Simplify

2. Upcoming/Current Events

August Today List Challenge here at Project Simplify. More detail next issue.

September Cultivate Your Flame, a 6 month course and study group to make space for and grow your awesome self. Details next issue.

October 20 Shawn will be speaking at the Gold Country Chapter of the Business and Professional Women meeting, 5:30 – 8pm.

3. Our Featured Quote

“Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They’re what make the instrument stretch-what make you go beyond the norm.”

— Cicely Tyson

4. Project Simplify Says So

The details for the Realism in Reality Today-ToDo List Challenge (herefore named the Today List Challenge) will be forthcoming in the next newsletter. It’ll be for the month of August so you have some time to brush up on your skills.

A ToDo list is so much more than recording a few reminders on a piece of paper and then crossing them off… 

• A  stellar ToDo tracking system frees your mind during the day to stay focused on the task or project at hand.
• It gives your overactive brain peace of mind that all of the incredibly important reminders it tries to keep track of, are in fact, being safely kept for their turn.
• It provides direction during the day when you might otherwise get distracted figuring out what to do next.
• And one of the coolest things about it is the ridiculously immense pleasure you can get by checking off each item, one by one. Booya!

On the other hand, a lacking ToDo list can leave you feeling that there’s always something else to be done. Then come feelings of being inadequate, overwhelmed or frustrated–none of which are beneficial emotions to carry with you!

Success strategies

There are two aspects to success with ToDo lists:

1. your ToDo (or “task”) manager system
2. your internal awareness, aka, the Natural Professional secret sauce

(Note: I’m assuming here that you work off of a Today List which is a subset of your entire ToDo list. Some people may choose instead to work solely according to contexts. More on “contexts” in the block quote halfway through the post The (Digital) Task Manager.)

ToDo manager factors

Know your system and use it.

I prefer a digital ToDo manager (as opposed to a paper-based version. My thoughts on this are here.)

Engage good practices of your system:

• Start with a verb
• Single actions
• Single next actions  — Getting to the nitty gritty.
• Review it frequently.
• Have it handy to capture random reminders that pop in the middle of other projects.

These are fairly objective habits that you can choose to practice (or not).

It’s more than learning a few tricks

Every day is not created equally and every week is different. Sometimes you have several deadlines looming, other times you have a lot of appointments or meetings, and other times you have ample stretches of non-scheduled time. Plus, the schedule (especially of the self-employed) is prone to unexpected situations to be accommodated.

Which and how many things you put on your list for the day is an art form. I give it this honor of weightiness because of its crazy power to make me feel like crap-ola when things don’t get checked off.

Is there a magic number of items to put on your daily list? Yes, but I cannot tell you what that number is. Not that it’s a secret or anything. Really, I’d tell you if I could.

The magic number is a varying blend of factors involving how many appointments you have, which deadlines are approaching, how high or low your energy level is, emotional factors weighing you down or buoying you up, family issues du jour, what you had for breakfast and lunch, amount of sleep you got last night, how passionate you are about the new puppy that just joined your household, and so on.

Wow! That’s a lot of things to keep in mind when coming up with your Today list!! Yikes!

Hold your pants on–you’ve got the answers! The trick is to access them when you need them.

The Natural Professional secret sauce

Ahhh, imagine being able to sign off the computer for the day with the satisfaction that nothing is slipping through the cracks, you’re on track for your deadlines, and you still have time to enjoy a lovely walk to your favorite park. This is the result of getting the right things done, and this doesn’t happen by coincidence.

Good news! You’ve been preparing for this by taking daily quiet time, practicing returning to home base, and doing your weekly and daily review. In contrast to the stressful pace of regular life, these activities can feel downright guiltily luxurious! Turns out though, that they pay off in spades.

Not only do they help you get the right number of items on your Today list, they provide the guidance needed to get the right items on your Today list.

Tying these practices together:

1. get quiet, let your busy brain take a break
2. return to home base (get grounded, centered, whatever you want to call it)
3. review upcoming schedule
4. review the ToDos collected in your ToDo manager
5. in a calm, non-attached manner, select the right items for tomorrow’s list based on deadlines, progress, and your gut sense of what’s appropriate.

It’s OK if your magic number for the day seems “ridiculously small” (this mockery coming, of course, from the superbly vocal inner productivity whip cracker). Quality over quantity–a fine mantra here.

Not only does the act of quieting down and returning to home base invite selection of appropriate Today list items, it creates space in your life that allows for unexpected answers and solutions to pop up. It lets the chafe fall from the wheat. It mysteriously lets your life run more smoothly. Good stuff, I tell ya.

Likely you already have some good habits going for your ToDo list management (I hope!). If you are like most folks, you could use practice in slowing down enough to consult with your natural professional self in coming up with the right and right number of items for your Today list.

Go ahead, give it a month. Dedicating attention to this crucial part of your workflow will likely yield surprising and interesting results.

Hence the Challenge. Bring on the special sauce! Details in the next issue…

5. The Not-So-Simple Life

by Lance Brown

“Quick – We Need This Thing Thingied! Can You Help?!?”

I have a confession to make: I am a screen-a-holic.

For a long time I’ve been able to cover it up, by not owning a TV or a cell phone. Most people would think I’m pretty lo-fi…until they see my computer station (and they see that one of my computer’s three monitors is used almost entirely for watching TV and movies.)

Did I say three monitors? Did I say computer, singular? My bad–I was living in the past. My latest configuration consists of three computers with two monitors each. Yes, that’s six screens.

Now before you get down on me–“That’s not simplifying at all, Lance! You said when you started this column that you had reduced your possessions. Reduced, Lance. Going from three to six is not reducing!”–it should be pointed out that this setup actually completes one of the items on my life’s to-do list. So there.

(Now you feel bad for jumping down my throat just then, don’t you? I forgive you. C’mon, fist bump. OK good.)

Granted, it’s not exactly the most monumental or practical of the things on my to-do list…but ever since I started using two monitors on my computer, 7 years ago or so, I’ve had a dream…

You know in action or mystery-thriller movies, how at some point the protagonist(s) end up going to some three-quarters-weird guy who basically lives inside a hub of information and technology, as represented by huge bank of monitors, all showing different stuff on them? He’s the one that can crack the encrypted thing, or tap into the crucial secret feed, or broadcast the important message out. (In pre-digital-age movies, he would have the special light or fluid that makes the message on the back of the map show up, or the ancient encyclopedia with the same picture as that scrap of parchment the hero found.)

Picture that guy, but better looking. :-)

Like I said…it’s not the biggest of my life’s to-do items. (It might even be the smallest.) And it does seem to go against the trend of simplifying (and conservation, and finding social acceptance ;-)). But actually, it does have a genuine simplification aspect to it. As crazy as my setup seems, trying to do all that I do on one screen would create a traffic jam of immense proportions; I would spend at least an hour each day just on the task of flipping from one program window to another.

Also, it’s not as expensive and luxurious (and thus as wasteful) as it looks. All 6 monitors and 3 computers cost a total of about $2200 ($1100 of which is my old bear of a computer from 2002.)

A lot of people spend more than that on one computer with one monitor. And what kind of hero would go to someone like that for that key info when the whole plot of the movie is at stake?

A dumb hero, that’s what kind. The smart heroes will be coming to me.

—

Lance Brown can be followed at http://twitter.com/FreelanceLance, where he is forced to keep his rambling insanity down to 140-character-or-less portions. (Movie heroes: you know how to reach me if you need me.)

Thanks for reading!